In an earlier post, I noticed that the PSC is hooked, as an addict would be hooked--painfully and destructively--on public sector advertising serving party political ends. The PSC has lost the Generalitat, and looks set to lose control of both Barcelona City Council and the Barcelona provincial Diputació. With every euro of public money the PSC spends on selling its own virtues, the hole it is digging for itself gets a little deeper.
Bundled together with today's Vanguardia, cheek by jowl with a flyer from PC City, is a 36-page magazine published by City Hall. The writers are La Vanguardia staffers; the production credits go to Edicions Clariana, for which the single Google hit is the company's own static web page. (Garnering one and only one hit from Google in 2011 is an achievement worthy of a Twilight Zone remake or a Jason Bourne thriller.) The title, Barcelona: Presupuesto 2011, belies the dirth of hard numbers between the covers. This magazine, or flyer, or pamphlet, was not intended for accountants. In 36 pages, it manages 36 colour photographs (though one page is mysteriously blank, evidence of self-censorship or a rush). There is no pretence of objectivity. Every headline casts the government of the city in a favourable light; every photographs tells an upbeat story. Hyperbole abounds: "Limpieza contante" reads one headline, as though we'd woken up in a city where street cleaners never slept. Two politicians make glossy, well-lighted appearances: Mayor Hereu and Deputy Mayor Jordi Carnes, both PSC men. Mr. Hereu's coalition partners do not.
The joke, of course, is on Mr. Hereu. He's spent money to sell the message that he's not wasting money, but to do so is to waste money and insult the democratic instincts of an electorate which, if it fails to vote, does so out of a mix of disgust and decency. Mr. Hereu had branded himself, in both senses of the word.
To top it all, it's all in Spanish. There's not a word of Catalan.
